A smell of burnt wood penetrated your nasal cavities as you walked the streets. It was busy - jeeps, fleeing people, soldiers and stray pigs everywhere. Helicopters crossed the sky at remarkably low altitudes, transporting heavy machineguns with grim faces behind them. Dust became airborne, and you seemed to be the only one suffering from it while the crowd stumbled on, seemingly unaffected by the dust. Suddenly, a short while after your helicopters had disappeared, another noise filled the air. Your experience warned you at that same instant: Charlie! You started running through the crowd moving in trance - women with children in their rucksacks and food in plastic bags. From under your helmet, you saw some Mi helicopters appear above the southern palm trees. moving closer at rapid speed. You HAD to reach your camouflaged helicopter shelter before they would destroy it - including your AH-64 Apache combat chopper!

The helicopters flew over you; they seemed to be after the people in the streets and the bamboo huts. Heavy arms spread death among the crowd and mutilated people fell on the ground with torn apart bodies, blasted skulls and seperated limbs. Next, the helicopters threw napalm, and as you reached the helicopter hideaway you saw the dark shapes of women and children in the flames. Quickly, a smell of burnt pigs' flesh and human hair entered your consciousness, together with yells and screams of people being returned to ashes. A small child stood there, looking at you with eyes of a sad Cocker Spaniel's. For a moment you hesitated and the urge struck you to save this kid. You could just jump into the camouflaged shelter when a bomb exploded nearby. The boy had ceased to exist. You opened the large doors of the shelter and entered the helicopter that was faithfully waiting there to perform its duties. As the rotors began flapping, the enemy helicopters appeared to turn back through the dense smoke, still firing at the suffering locals. Blood, guts and brain pieces littered the streets and you had problems to keep your sandwiches inside as you saw it all happen right in front of you.

Charlie seemed to be startled as the mighty Apache all of a sudden appeared in front of them. They barely had time to be frightened as you pressed the proper buttons and a Sidewinder rocket launced rapidly... BOOOOM (or something like that; add one or several exclamation marks if you wish).You pulled up your fighting machine as the poor remains of the Russian helicopter fell burning on the ground. The other one started panicing and fired its heavy machine guns, luckily aiming at the spot you had just left. The shelter blew up in a cacophony of explosions - pity for the fuel and ammo located there. The air was filled with fire and sweat started appearing on your forehead due to the combination of this intense heat and the suspense. Quickly, you positioned your chopper above the enemy craft, that was still firing rapidly at what it's pilot considered to be the burning Apache. You flipped a switch, and say a bomb drop from under you...

"Gunship, the ultimate simulation", that's what reads on the package if you buy it. If it is the ultimate simulation we shall see after days and nights testing the "game". I came to the conclusion that is the best helicopter simulator I had ever seen. If you load the game, a giant helicopter is about to infiltrate your screen and it shoots his name on the screen: "GUNSHIP", The helicopter you see is the world's best equipped flying fortress and anti tank machine man ever built - it is the Apache AH-64A combat heli.

After a short loading, time you can choose you mission, set your skill, set the reality level and you can choose your weapons, too. If you're flying a helicopter for the first time (like most of us) you had best get started with the training in the USA, in the Nevada desert. The 'enemies' in this aera shoot blanks, so if they hit you you're not dead right away. On this mission, you can get the necessary flying hours and train yourself in atack and defence technics. After several training hours, you'll return to base and get a medal for finishing your training; you're now ready for hunting the big game.

There are several mission-and skill degrees you can choose from. Every mission has it's own character - for example, the enemies in South East Asia are not as well equipped as those in Western Europe. So if you choose the South East Asia mission, you get the details concerning enemies, what kind of weapons they use, the weahter forecast and an indication whether or not Russian helicopters appear to be operating in the area.At this point you can still retire by choosing the sick call option (though this isn't particularly favourable for your career).But, of course, you decide to go on and blast the agressor out of the terrain. While you're standing on the landing bay you can look at the map where to go. If you fly too high, you get caught by the enemy radar and you and kiss your ass goodbye. If you stay too low, you spot the enemy too late so they'll get you before you even touched a button. So the best tactic I found was to raise to a 200 feet search by the nearest hill and fly to it as fast as you can. If you get there, look over the top and find the enemy. If there is no enemy, make a 'run' for the next mountain. Hop over the top and search. If you find an enemy, go down again,choose your weapon, go up again, lock your TADS (Target

Acquisition & Designation System) onto the targer and shoot. The TADS, which is displayed into the IHADSS (Integrated Helmet And display Sighting Sub-System) searches for the next target.

If you destroyed your primary and secondary target, you can return to your base. If you've almost returned to the base, you get a radio message which sends a codeword. You must react and send the counter code word back. If you don't, you'll be recognised as a hostile helicopter and you will be shot down immediately.

If you succeed in finishing the mission successfully, you'll get a promotion.

The main target of the game is to get promoted to a colonel and get all the medals. After days of playing, I found it the most exciting new game that Microprose has ever released. The grapics were very good; everything is very detailed. If you fly low enough you even can see the markings on the roads.

The only thing that I missed were the real maps. The map of Asia is the same map used as the one in the USA.

The manual is very good and well thought about. The sound...what must I say about this? You hear a "brommmmmm" of the helicopter and "boemmmmm" for firing rockets, so this is hardly enough to judge if it's good or not. If you're addicted to simulators like "Flightsimulator II", you must have this program as well. It is very well programmed and very realistic. If the next game from Micropose, "Kennedy Approach", will be like this one, it would be an honour to review it. After the two earlier games, "Silent Service" and "F15 Strike Eagle", "Gunship" helps to get the name of this software house higher again.

Disclaimer
The text of the articles is identical to the originals like they appeared
in old ST NEWS issues. Please take into consideration that the author(s)
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